This is sick. I always had nightmares about mobilized tanks intercepting me in Meduna. "What if they moved?" Damn tanks required a lot of explosives to blow up too, not to talk about the ridiculously fast rotation of the tank's turret.
@anv
If are you planning to add tank crews and something more then these would be my features I'll ask for:*Tank turret takes at least (1) turn to be rotated and cannot fire in the same turn: One of those things I have a great hatred targeted at. *Disabling vehicle or parts of it:
Tire damage: Slows down or terminates the vehicles mobility.
Engine damage: Disables mobility and a small chance of the vehicle catching fire (Spawn fire [molotov effect]).
Killing the driver (stationary): Vehicle stops and a new driver has to take old one's place.
Killing the driver (moving): Vehicle keeps the same speed and stops after a few (4-6 tiles) or continues as far as the thing rams against something.*Driver and passenger(s) eject: Shall the automobile take enough beating or ignite in a glorious fire.. Shalt thou run their arses off.*Disabling tank or parts of it:
Engine/Fuel tank damage: Disables mobility, chance of tank catching fire (Spawn fire [molotov effect]).
Track damage: Disables mobility.
Turret damage: Disables rotation of the turret or disables the turret from firing completely.
Ammo storage damage: Small chance of f*cking everything up.
These could be like legs/arms/torso/head for the tank, or simply "x chance of" modifiers. (Like 30% chance of disabling the tracks or 25% chance of disabling the engine with a 40% chance of the tank catching fire)
*Smoke screen: For tanks and other armored special duty vehicles, would decrease chance to hit and in worst cases: visibility.*Tank crew ejection: If or when the tank takes significant amount of damage or vital parts of the tank are disabled, tank crew would eject.*Capturing and manning a tank: If the tank was not completely destroyed in the process, but only left disabled.. A skilled mechanic/engineer could repair it. (No unlimited ammo though, rare special shells could be used)*Tank indicator in enemy patrols/pools: Really, while it might be cute to have 6 red dots from which it doesn't matter are they admins or elites.. BUT HAVING A TANK IS DISGUISED AS A RED DOT TOO? Have at least purple to indicate them. Even militia has green, light blue and dark blue.

"Umm, commander, our mobile militia just spotted an enemy patrol on B10."
"Oh, roger. We send a squad to intercept them."
6 hours later..
"ELLIOT YOU IDIOT, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO TELL FROM THESE RED DOTS THAT WHICH ONE OF THEM IS A F*CKING TANK!?"
"Uh umm... Commander, you see the red dot indicates it's a enemy."
"A TANK, ELLIOT, A TANK!"
*SLAP!* *SLAP!* *SLAP!*
"Now Elliot, send flowers to their families."

That's exactly would be my reaction, if I were to roleplay this unfortunate, but fixable scenario.

*APC's for the Queen's army and the player:
It would be cool if one of these bad boys were to assault a fortified position, for example a house.. *gargles in drool*

APC assaults my fortified house, deploys smoke screen, APC is lost on sight. I can't but just make a lucky shot with my rocket launcher. *Swoosh!* *Medium-distance explosion* Nothing.
Next turn, APC drives through the smoke at 60 km/h, interruption, I open heavy small arms fire with 5 mercs at the APC ineffectively. Turn continues for the enemy and as the APC rams through the wooden wall, killing one of my rifle mercs. There nothing I can do, as the turn doesn't end for the enemy..
It's barely an beginning when 4 Queen's army elites jump from the backdoor of the APC and open fire, one even throws a stun grenade. That's it, I'm never playing with Iron man -mode ON!

*Ability to look for/scavenge cars: In the map screen.. Different grids would have a special perform action: Search for cars. Most of these would be highly damaged and out of fuel, but the idea is not to make an Arulco racing team.. But to make vehicles more common in order to have them used in different (normally sacrificial) tasks like car bombings, disguises and generic drive-by's.*Special inventory: Not the one in the map screen, but rather a simplified inventory that can be used in tactical and combat. For example: Delivering ammunition, guns and supplies.. Or having a car full of explosives.. Then have it detonated, along with the driver or without.

Forgive me if I added something that you already have developed or something that is theoretically impossible to have coded inside the game, that even the idea sounds stupid.
But nevertheless, outstanding job!
I've never thought I would see this, I just used to have that small feeling of euphoria when in non-modded JA2 you could move 1-2 tiles to pick your parking place... Oh my god, it was the best.. Not.

As of r7314 and GameDir r2062, tanks can now be shown on the strategic view. For visual reasons, only one will be shown, even if there are multiple ones.Note that this works for tanks spawned by this very feature, but not necessarily for tanks that spawn around Meduna.

The new sti libraries from 2062 are required, otherwise the game will crash if it wants to display an icon and cannot find it.

The icon looks kinda meh. If someone else has a better one, feel free to integrate it into the lib and commit it (make sure its size fits).

Suggestions (just brainstorming): Here's a smaller image suggesting a tank... and 2 others suggesting tank cannons(vertically - in a place which up till now is unused:
Always willing to make a .STI file for one of them...

For simplicity in coding & presentation, suggest to use a different color for tanks.
Vehicles uses white color, so tanks could use a different shade like grey/metallic color.

800x600 sample; 1024x768 will look better.

The sample on the right with light grey corners is to represent 10x quantity, be it mercs/militia/enemy/tanks(? - Someone muz b crazy). (Already proposed to Flugente. Fingercrossed that he will do it together with the tank icon modification. Took the initiative so that he can focused on other features.)

Always good to throw in different ideas and then have the best combination implemented.

Edit:
The first enemy icon is a T in 640x480 & 800x600.

Different shapes/letters will be hard to decipher. Either go with larger Tank icons or different colored square blocks. Have to take into consideration the 3x1 tank in lower resolution.

Okay... I just mowed down my first few enemies "hood-style" from the seats of the El Dorado. Very, very cool feature!

But... cars seem to be rather slow. I think they need either twice the amount of APs or need far less APs for moving around. Also it's not entirely clear all the time which speed mode the car uses. Maybe adding a small icon could do the trick?

Also view range from within the vehicle is kinda low (using same vehicles.xml as 1.13), it's rather hard to see enemies from time to time, even if driving by closely.

@Sevenfm:
These STI are great and in the same style as vanilla graphics. Toy cars already gave me another psychotic idea. Did Green Eyes give permission to freely use his work, if not, how can I blackmail him into it?

I'm going to add (well, already added here cause it's copypasta) few modder friendly bodytypes, that will require only sti and jsd (jsd can be copied from already existing ones though) to add to introduce new vehicles without overwriting existing ones. Armoured jeep will require vehicle weapons handling in code (dedicated gunner) for full functionality.

@Marcho:
That's the idea, critical vehicle hits are already partially supported (their effects anyway, not way to get them or fix them).
Problem is, I want to add full aiming selection on Player's side, so just like Head/Torso/Legs, Engine/Tire/Treads/Crew/Gas Tank will appear which is not that easy due to how things are handled (for soldier, rectangle around them is considered, and only height of cursor in it specifies location - for vehicle location will change with every bodytype and rotation). Also critical location of any vehicle segment is specified in jsd, but they are messed up (less when before I reworked vehicle jsds though). BTW, there's no "arms" aim location on enemies, shame, I wish there was full Fallout-style selection.

Turret taking 1 turn would break balance completely, but other (higher) value than standard configurable through APBPConstants should be enough (like 10AP per direction, meaning 40AP to do 180). After all it makes sense turret rotates slower than person.

Part with APC and soldiers jumping out straight in your face would require extensive AI changes, because AI IS A MESS AND ENEMIES ARE MORONS.

@smeagol:
Vehicles and passengers don't spot landmines. Better ramming protection will be dependent on armour (they already had armour type linked, just it doesn't do anything. Interestingly enough, so does helicopter). AP for vehicles moving will get own AP constant. Slower movement mode will get own yellow cursor icon (like walking/running cursors).

I wanted to add possibility to repair critical hits depending on skill traits (so anyone can change a tire, fixing leaking gas tank or severed tank tread requires technician and damaged engine requires engineer). If we add facility requirement to some repairs and also upgrades (changing armour types and weapons) will need that facility placed somewhere. At the moment only facility that offers vehicle repair as assignment is junkyard. Another could be Joe's gas station and maybe also selected workshops in towns.

I guess Joe could also function like Waldo and offer repair for money.

@tank icon saga:
I wanted just bigger squares for tank :< After seeing icons already on screens I vote for standard block with changed colour instead of fancy icon after all, mostly due to look in the lowest resolution. Precedence is already made with normal Player controlled vehicles which are just white squares instead of yellow and consistency is a good thing. One thing, we should get exact number of tanks. I would think one tank more or less makes a bigger difference than one admin

Unfortunately, there is no jsd for them. And the projection (perspective) is not perfect, but it's hardly noticable.
Also, he is working on other 3d models of vehicles, so there will be more vehicles/tanks later

Also view range from within the vehicle is kinda low (using same vehicles.xml as 1.13), it's rather hard to see enemies from time to time, even if driving by closely.

Maybe this is a reflection how hard it is to actually shoot from a moving car, unless you are in an open top or utility vehicle. Possible disadvantages could also be the use of rifles compared to SMG's and pistols, as swinging or shooting a longer fire-arm really limits possible arcs of fire you have. Believe me, I'm speaking from experience! :laugh:

I haven't actually tried out the feature myself yet so the following is purely my speculation. From what I read from the post, I got the feeling that the moving tanks will be the first enemies you encounter in a tactical combat, which in turn means that they need to be dispatched very early in the battle. In that case the moving tanks are only making their presence felt early in the battle. In case the mercs survive the initial tank push, the battle becomes the old fashioned infantry on infantry battle. If it is indeed the way AI employs the tank, some changes to the tank AI may need to be done to make the presence of tank felt throughout the whole battle, say for example forcing tanks to pace their movement, only to make a push when the infantry have pinpointed the target location. Also I don't know if tank could reinforce from the border, or they have to be placed at the beginning of the battle, with the former being more preferable IMHO.

It's been a very long time since I last fought a tank. But from what I remember, the tanks are only minimally more detectable than human targets, that may need to be changed.

How does the AI handle an enemy tank, say I bring my mobile militia to a patrol and run into some tank? I hope they know how to deal with a tank if they are appropriately equipped or run for their lives if they're not.

Any ways to gain early access to my own tanks :diabolical: ? Frankly though it is gonna be purely for transportation, I just don't feel comfortable bringing soft skinned cars to a war zone with all the stray bullets flying around(from both the enemy and the militia).

As a complement feature, may I ask for a "ready" state for rocket launchers just like any other firearms so I can actually receive vision range bonus from the launcher? I've always wanted this feature, but the moving tanks are make it absolutely necessary.

It seems the patch makes sense. I would like to add it to the development trunk.
is anyone against adding the patch??

Even if encouraging the player to use scouting / retreating as possible tactical options during early game to evade tanks would be nice to have, I do agree that tanks in early game encounters are basically not or only very hard too beat.

And having an ini option that can be adjusted is always good, so I would say, go for it.

@Ocular
Could you try using e following command to create a TortoiseSVN-friendly patch to facilitate SVN managers in committing the patches?(Failed in test commit by simple copy-and-paste)
(Failed in test commit by patching through TortoiseSVN GUI)

[color:#999999]

git diff --no-prefix master..branch > [patchfile]

[/color]
Thanks.
Edit:
Stick to your usual method as new method still does not work in TortoiseSVN GUI. Able to successfully commit both formats using SVN cmdline.

I stumbled upon JA 2 somewhat recently and I am also quite new around the forum. So pardon me if this is not the most suitable thread to post this issue about driving cars in the game.

I have this bug happening while on the tactical screen (so far have driven the Ice Cream Truck only):

While driving the truck in the tactical screen and there are enemies present on that sector, when I move close to the let's say southern edge of the map and try to get the cursor to change so that I can move to the southern sector with the truck, the game crashes.

I have the 1.13 build 7667. Just wanted to let you know about the issue.